Biographical and anecdotical, with sketches of the Seminole war, nullification, secession, reconstruction, churches and literature, /with rolls of all the companies from Edgefield in the War of Secession, War with Mexico and with the Seminole Indians.

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Burton traces the evolution of Edgefield County from the antebellum period through Reconstruction and beyond. From amassed information on every household in this large rural community, he tests the many generalizations about southern black and white families of this period and finds that they were strikingly similar. Wealth, rather than race or class, was the main factor that influenced family structure, and the matriarchal family was but a myth.